erebrum is not occupied with direct
impressions from without but with the ideas of such impressions. Instead
of the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly appreciated
by the sensory ganglia, or primitive nervous centres, the cerebrum
receives only the representations of these sensations; and its
consciousness is called _representative_ consciousness, to distinguish
it from the original or _presentative_ consciousness. Is it not
significant that we have hit on the same word to distinguish the
function of our House of Commons? We call it a _representative_ body,
because the interests with which it deals are not directly presented to
it, but represented to it by its various members; and a debate is a
conflict of representations of the results likely to follow from a
proposed course--a description which applies with equal truth to a
debate in the individual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great
governing masses take no part in the executive functions. As, after a
conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally predominate act
on the subjacent ganglia, and through their instrumentality determine
the bodily actions; so the parties which, after a parliamentary
struggle, gain the victory, do not themselves carry out their wishes,
but get them carried out by the executive divisions of the Government.
The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still devolves on the
original directive centres: the impulse passing from the Parliament to
the Ministers and from the Ministers to the King, in whose name
everything is done; just as those smaller, first-developed ganglia,
which in the lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are
still, in the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through which
the dictates of the cerebrum are worked out. Moreover, in both cases
these original centres become increasingly automatic. In the developed
vertebrate animal, they have little function beyond that of conveying
impressions to, and executing the determinations of, the larger centres.
In our highly organized government, the monarch has long been lapsing
into a passive agent of Parliament; and now, ministries are rapidly
falling into the same position. Nay, between the two cases there is a
parallelism even in respect of the exceptions to this automatic action.
For in the individual creature it happens that under circumstances of
sudden alarm, as from a loud sound close at hand, an unexpected object
starting